Game On

Game of Thrones Stars on What Jon and Daenerys Were Really Thinking When They Met

This post contains frank discussion of Season 7, Episode 3 of Game of Thrones: “The Queen’s Justice.” If you’re not caught up or don’t want to be spoiled, now would be the time to leave. Seriously, I won’t warn you again. Skedaddle.

Are they gone? Good. Let’s dive in.

First of all, let me say that from my perspective, this episode contained some of the best acting Kit Harington has ever done on the series. Maybe he’s just happy to be out of the snow, and in the relative warmth of Dragonstone. Emilia Clarke was also bringing her A-game in a scene that showrunner D.B. Weiss called palpably electric—especially on the show’s “notoriously boring” set—in a post-episode interview on HBO Go.

Since Jon is a king and Daenerys a queen, neither one exactly said everything they were thinking during this first, politically-charged scene. But thanks to a couple of interviews with the major players, we have a better idea of what was going on behind those carefully chosen phrases.

According to Weiss, because Jon hasn’t been watching the HBO show along with us (or reading the books, apparently, Jon), he doesn’t know the tremendous hurdles Daenerys has had to clear in order to get here: “I think he sees a rich girl with a fancy name sitting in a big chair with a fancy dress on, proclaiming herself the queen of the world. So I don’t think he’s looking at her with as much respect as she’s come to take as her due.”

Harington might agree with Weiss—but he also adds in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that Jon is grappling with some feelings of attraction as well:

As far as Jon knows, he’s just meeting this queen he’s heard of and
trying to negotiate with her — he’s not meeting Daenerys, who the
audience has been watching for so many years. That helps with the
surprise of it. He walks into the room and doesn’t expect to see such
a beautiful young woman of similar age to him. Any young man’s
reaction is going to be, ‘Okay…’ But he puts that aside, because he
has to.

As for what Daenerys thinks of Jon, Weiss has a surprising answer. He says she sees Jon as an “unwashed barbarian from the North”—a surprising attitude for someone who employs the Dothraki. He adds that she looks at Jon as “a bastard. His name is Jon Snow, yet he’s calling himself king.” Once again, that’s an unexpected reaction for someone as woke as Daenerys Targaryen, who made a slave translator her most trusted advisor. But Clarke seems to concur, telling E.W. that Daenerys “doesn’t like him, and she doesn’t believe him.”

But everyone agrees that once Daenerys and Jon tell each other their backstories, the two kindest monarchs in Westeros will probably get on the same page. “You kinda died??? I kinda died too!!” Maybe they should binge-watch the first six seasons of the show together. HBO and chill?